The following is an email sent out to the entire student body a la Coach Purnell:

Dear Students,

I want to thank you for your great support that you’ve provided our basketball team this year. As you know, at this point in the season, each game becomes more and more important as we fight for seeding in the ACC and NCAA Tournament. This Wednesday we face the biggest game of the year up to this point as we play Miami at 7:30pm in Littlejohn Coliseum. It is pivotal for us to have a great crowd! We have such a great home court advantage when Littlejohn is full and as you know this begins with the students. You have been great all year long and we need you for two more games!

Let’s make Littlejohn louder than ever as your Tigers take on a very good Miami basketball team. Don’t forget to wear Orange and I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday Night at 7:30pm.

Go Tigers!
Oliver Purnell

Side Note: Have you ever noticed that Cliff Hammonds looks exactly like Mike Epps

I wonder if OP and Cliff have similarly styled arguments in practice.

The Tigers are at it again, and things are looking bright after the first day of NCAA Baseball play . The Tigers, ranked as high as 13th in some polls, and as low as 23rd by Baseball America, are looking forward to another good season, and maybe a return to the CWS. The polls are split on who in the ACC will be contenders but you can definitely expect North Carolina, Miami and FSU , among others, to be tough this year. As usual, the chickens in Columbia are ranked higher than Clemson and will soon start the smack talking, though this is the one sport they usually fare well in.

After having their season opener against Mercer canceled due to inclement weather (or the threat of it) Friday evening, the Tigers played a double header on Saturday in a great start for the Tigers in 2008. The first game went to the Tigers in a 12-5 showing where returning starter Doug Hogan went 3/4 with a two run homer in the game. Starter Ryan Hinson got the win, going for 5 innings in good form, allowing just 2 runs off of 5 hits, and 3 walks while striking out 4. In other good news, Stan Widmann, who was drafted by the Oakland A’s in the 39^th round has returned to form after sitting out most of the 2007 season with an injury. He singled to bring in Clemson’s first run of the season.

This year’s new spring football league (competing with the Arena League) just had their draft recently and some of our guys made it. Nathan Bennett (T) and Roman Fry (G) landed with the Alabama team, Tennessee got Woody Dantzler (QB), William Henry (T), and Reggie Merriweather (RB), and lastly Kevin Youngblood (WR) gets to play on Ford Field for the Michigan team.

This is the first spring league for football that I can actually see garnering some attention as it’s kinda set up as a minor league system for the NFL. The basic premise is that all players have to be college graduates. Each team will just be called Team Alabama, Team Texas, etc. The corresponding teams will play in major college or professional venues in their respective states (Team Tennessee plays in Neyland, Team Michigan plays at Ford Field in Detroit). Lastly, teams will feature players that played for in state colleges with some non-regional players on the roster. Plans for an Indiana team out of Purdue and a North Carolina team out of Raleigh are in the works for 2009 if the league doesn’t fold. I hope they don’t try to lump us in with North Carolina cause I can’t stand that they did that with the Carolina Panthers.

- Clemson’s Athletic Department, always with its finger firmly off the pulse of the student body, is now acting to curb fun at Clemson baseball games. In an email sent to Clemson’s Student Body President Josh Bell, John Seketa requests help curbing “organizations that set up a tent, cook-out [sic], play flip-cup, etc… and never come inside to watch the game.” He mentions that students “leave the facility like a tornado zone” and that their actions are contrary to the family atmosphere desired at Clemson’s sporting events. I agree that Clemson’s family atmosphere at sporting events is a signature aspect of our university and should be preserved. However I would also point out that Clemson is a university, and college students need a fun and loose atmosphere in which to enjoy sporting games as well. This is just my (Chili’s) opinion, but college baseball is boring as hell most of the time. Sitting around and drinking and screaming horrid things at the outfielders is a time honored tradition at Clemson and shouldn’t be changed in any way. However if the outfield screamers are indeed leaving behind garbage they ought to be reprimanded in some way. I just know Clemson well enough to know that they’ll eliminate students drinking at baseball games before they urge them to throw their trash away. Something about using a bazooka when a flyswatter would do…

- Coincidentally, on Sunday night IPTAY launched their new campaign to raise $10 million campaign to expand the baseball stadium and help fund smaller sports. The budget will put new seats and stands beyond the outfield fences and beside the batting cages.

- Sticking with baseball, you Charleston area Tigers should attend the February 27th matchup of Clemson and College of Charleston at Patriot’s Point. The game is at 5 PM and you can pick up tickets here.

- The Men’s basketball lost to FSU in Tallahassee tonight by a score of 64-55. This drops
Clemson to a 19-7 overall and 7-5 in ACC play. KC Rivers, Cliff Hammonds, and Trevor Booker were the only double digit scorers. Check out the box score.

- The Charleston Post & Courier has a great article on Cliff Hammonds, one of the most underrated players in the league. Not only is he rising to the top of the scrappy Tigers lineup, he’s an academic star to boot. He’s majoring in pyschology and the most difficult and time consuming of all majors at Clemson: architecture. He’s doing all this while having a wife and child. Oh, and he got a 4.0 last semester. People this great at everything sometimes just make you feel like crap.

WHAT REALLY GRINDS OUR GEARS!

Chili:
Ashley Judd. Okay, she doesn’t anger me, but the sports coverage of her does. WE GET IT, she’s a Kentucky fan. We needn’t be reminded of this every time she’s at a game. Oh, look, there’s Ashley Judd watching… SEC Basketball. I guess she’s a better actress than I thought she was because she’s managing to look vaguely interested in a basketball game involving Mississippi State. Come to think of it, she’s a lot like her favorite basketball team. You know, in the 90s they were great and got a lot of attention, but they’ve made some poor career choices (Billy Gillespie, every lame thriller she’s ever been in) and are generally irrelevant in 2008 and now when people think of them it’s just sort of “meh.”

Don’t send me any more damned Facebook application requests. I don’t want to be a zombie, or a pirate, or a ninja. I don’t want to play Oregon Trail with you, either.
People who reminisce about the Oregon Trail deserve a good cockpunch. “Hey, remember when you’d like… ford a river and.. uh… your oxen would die? Man, that was awesome.” No, no the fuck it wasn’t.

I’m not going to rant about all the Ohioans in Charleston, I’m really not. It’s a free country, move where you want. Some of my best friends are Ohioans. That being said, nobody here cares about your team. We know you love the Buckeyes. Good for you. In Charleston you’re generally a Clemson or a Sakerlina fan. It’s not that we don’t believe all your yarns about how awesome OSU is, or that we don’t respect your long winning history, we just don’t care. Not at all. Not. One. Bit. And if I see you trotting down the street wearing a Buckeye jersey and a nut necklace I might laugh and point. Don’t take it personally.

Willy Mac:

Pretty much everything Chili said with the addition of this: If I pay a car wash place almost 30 bucks to clean my car, then DO YOUR DAMN JOB. Please take the time to actually wipe down the inside and vacuum. Now, I realize that not many USC fans probably read this site, so please pass the message along for me when you see them. Also, enjoy the following hilarity of some guy that broke into a liquor store, then became trapped. I can’t tell if he was already drunk, but I’m guessing he was.